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Cyrus laughed. “You’re kidding, right? I don’t know how your department operates but in Bly, we don’t hire forensic experts for closed cases. We don’t usually hire them at all. You know how expensive it would be to get a lip-reading expert to review this tape? For what?”
He was right. Forensic experts were extremely pricey. Yet, if Trinity got her hands on this tape, the first thing she’d do would be to find one to review it. Then again, her network had practically unlimited funding. Josie met Noah’s eyes. He knew what she was asking without her ever having to speak. Before Josie, he’d dated a woman who was deaf. He’d learned some sign language, but he’d also learned to read lips quite well. It had come in handy in prior cases.
He nodded at her.
She stood and gave him her seat. To Cyrus, he said, “I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty good at reading lips. Mind if I give it a try?”
Cyrus sighed. “We all tried that already. Half a dozen officers tried to read their lips. Didn’t get anywhere.”
“Just let me try,” Noah said.
“Fine. Do what you want. I don’t know how this helps your murder cases or protects Anya, but sure, give it a go.”
Josie said, “Have you got a notepad? Pen? So we can write this down?”
He shot her a dirty look but then heaved himself out of the chair. He left the room and returned minutes later with a yellow legal pad and pen. He handed it to Josie and motioned for her to take his seat next to Noah. She held the pen in one hand, ready to transcribe what Noah said, even though leaning over the pad made her head swim. The numbing medication was almost completely worn off now. The stitches burned and the tender skin they held together pulsated.
Noah pulled the laptop toward him and played the video once more. He couldn’t get anything from the first several minutes during which Mathias and Jana were mostly in profile. But once the physical altercation started, he was able to decipher some of what they were saying.
Leaning in toward the screen, he rewound, played, rewound, and played several more times, talking as he went. “He says to her, ‘Don’t go…sounds ridiculous—no, suspicious…you don’t know…doing.”
The Chief tried to fill in what they were missing. “Don’t go to meet this person? This sounds suspicious. You don’t know what you’re doing?”
“I’m not completely sure,” said Noah. “He pivots a little at that point. I can’t see his face clearly enough. But here, he comes back around into the frame a bit more and says, ‘Who? Tell me…can’t let you go unless you tell me.’”
Cyrus leaned in, head between Josie and Noah, and peered at the screen while Noah replayed it. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re getting all this just from watching this video?”
Noah said, “Watch his mouth.”
As he replayed the segment for a final time, he mouthed the words in time with Mathias. When Josie watched it with Noah overlaying the words, it was unmistakable.
Cyrus must have agreed because he said, “I’ll be damned.”
“What about her?” asked Josie.
Noah let the video play on. “She says, ‘You can’t tell me what to do.’ Then something else. Then he says, ‘But I can tell you what you should do. You’re gonna get…’ I think he says in trouble. She says, ‘Get off me. Let go.’”
On screen, the two struggled, their bodies turning this way and that. Noah paused the footage. Rewound. Played again. “He says, ‘Please don’t do this. Don’t go…sounds like a scam.’ Then she says, ‘You’re wrong. I know what I’m doing. What if I told you…’ Shit. She gets turned around in the struggle.”
“There,” Josie said. “Her face turns back. Can you figure it out?”
He played it several times. “She says, ‘Don’t you want to know the truth…’ The rest gets cut off when she tries to pull away from him again.”
The Chief said, “The truth about what?”
Cyrus shook his head. “The truth about her birth parents. That’s what Mathias said in his statement. She was trying to track them down.”
Something nagged at Josie. “But why would Mathias want to know the truth about her birth parents? Why wouldn’t she sayshewanted to know the truth?”
Cyrus said, “Maybe the lieutenant here is reading it wrong.”
“It’s possible,” Noah admitted with a sigh. “We’re not exactly getting the full conversation here. Only snippets.”
“It’s more than Bly PD had until about twenty minutes ago,” The Chief said. “Fraley, see if you can decipher any of the rest of it.”
They all quieted while Noah went back to work. Toward the end of the confrontation, as the struggle became more physical, their faces were only in a position for Noah to read their lips for short bursts. He only caught snatches of what was said. “Mathias says, ‘You’re wrong’ and then I lose him but when he turns again, I just get him saying the word ‘insane.’ Jana says something I can’t see that ends in ‘it could be yours,’ and Mathias says, ‘you’re crazy…don’t know who is filling your head…’ and then he turns away. Right here, his face comes back into the frame. He says, ‘Whatever you are trying to do, please stop.’ She says, ‘Don’t you want to know?’ and he says—wait, I can’t tell what he’s saying right there but when he turns his head back, here, he says, ‘promise you it won’t end well. Stop being a meddling brat and come home with me.’”
At that point in the footage, Jana kicked him and ran off. Their faces turned away from the screen. Noah said, “That’s it.”
